Blog Author

As Vice President of Strategic Technology and Marketing, Russ Danford leads a talented team whose mission is to provide value to the tech community, while tying those efforts to MATRIX’s bottom-line. Previously, Russ held various positions in recruiting, sales and operations - spanning 14 years of service with MATRIX.

Just over three months ago in this blog, I announced the launch of MATRIX’s first “Tech Candidate Experience Survey”. The full story behind this initiative can be found here. But the CliffsNotes version is this: we wanted to understand Tech Job Seekers’ behaviors and frustrations, so we could make things work better.

With that goal as the backdrop, I am pleased to share with you today the results of our survey. There’s a lot to unpack, and I encourage Tech Professionals and anyone in the Talent Acquisition community (agency or corporate) to take a few minutes to dig into our findings. But to give you a taste of what we learned, here are some key takeaways from the survey...

Keeping Their Options Open

On average, respondents rated their likelihood of changing jobs in the next 12 months as a 7 (out of 10)

55% of all respondents review job opportunities either daily or weekly – when expanded to monthly, that number swells to 81%

Recruiters: The Good News

Communication with a Recruiter beat out personal and professional networking as the best overall experience for Job Seekers

Agency Recruiters are valued for providing “insider” knowledge about companies/openings, and for increasing the likelihood of getting a job offer

Top 5 Things Tech Professionals Would Change About the Job Search Process

Build personal, trusting relationships with Recruiters that go beyond one job they are trying to fill

More transparent job postings that include compensation

Is any of the above surprising? No, not really. But the totality of the responses, and the negative tenor of many, reinforce the need to better align candidate expectations with real-world experiences.

So what’s next from MATRIX? Simply put, it’s time to fulfill the “Let’s Make This Work Better” promise. We’ve already shared these results with our leadership team, Recruiters and Account Executives. And we’ve crafted concrete actions for each of these groups, to help address Job Seeker frustrations. Our list of action items will continue to expand. But below are our current areas of focus - including key initiatives and timelines for each.

Transparency – Include compensation information on all jobs posted to career sites (In progress)

Relationships – Implement new Consultant and Alumni Care program (2017)

Professional Development – New Learning Management System that includes extensive technology training modules for Recruiters and Account Executives (Completed)

As we move into 2017 and beyond, you can expect ongoing updates on our progress in this blog. And as we’ve done before, we humbly request your help. To Tech Professionals, we need you to keep providing great suggestions and feedback – and most importantly, to hold us accountable for delivering a consistently great candidate experience. To the broader corporate and agency Talent Acquisition community, we invite you to join us on this mission. We welcome your input, and offer our assistance in helping you create and deliver your own amazing candidate experiences.